 I think Lisa on that one where could we talk about the sidewalk whether Bruce is going to be here early enough I know he's usually really good about yeah before we get to yeah maybe oh call of needed orders just about 630 the first thing we have on the agenda are we have two minutes to take care of tonight the first one is for December 11th 2018 is there a motion to approve is there a second page one page two think the only thing I had on that was at the top of the page it's under the court treasurer and elections in the last bullet he says she says there are no elections this budget year there are town elections there are no state elections this year page three at the bottom of page two is was the position that chief Morton wanted a combination fire marshal assistant fire chief or were those two separate positions one position okay and the also on page two or three if not all those in favor of approving the minutes of December 11th 2018 say aye aye opposed Ted was not here so move on to the minutes of December 18th 2018 is there a motion to approve is your second page one this one I'm good page three corrections all those in favor of approving the minutes of December 18th 2018 say aye aye opposed and one abstention joy so we'll move on then to public comment is there any on the audience who wish to make a comment anything either on the agenda or not on the agenda see no hands raised to move on to perhaps Jennifer not in the room either okay she's in the office well maybe we can just move on to the catamount property project update and did have a half an hour aside for that may take a little longer but at any rate we'll start with this and Melinda and Kate Warner and think Sean Donovan is here also from DC so Melinda has drafted a very comprehensive memo for us and perhaps you could give us some input on your memo and then we can go on to discussing parts of it so the bulk of the planning activity has been done the management plan has been accepted and the license agreement accepted so the main focus has been on continuing due diligence activities and continuing to raise funds for the project so we thought we would give you an update on those things so we wanted to update you on a phase one environmental assessment that was done and the results of that so in fall of 2017 there was a phase one environmental assessment done as part of TPLs due diligence for the acquisition the assessment was conducted by L.E. environmental and documented what is called a recognized environmental condition which was an underground fuel tank that had was corroded and released gasoline the tank was promptly removed in fall of 2017 and that was paid for by the McCullis and by the state's petroleum cleanup fund and the site was subsequently listed with Vermont DC so initial investigation was done to determine the magnitude of contamination soil borings were taken and ground water monitoring wells were installed the following spring and also so samples were taken from the wells in spring of 2018 and in fall of 2018 so the analysis of monitoring samples taken in the spring indicated there were some limited soil contaminant subservice contamination and the environmental firm concluded that that contamination was limited and was not widespread it can it appears to be confined to about a thousand square foot area around the location of the former underground storage tank beginning but about three feet below grade and down to about eight feet below grade so the environmental firm has concluded it's unlikely for recreational users or the general public to come in contact with contaminated soil or ground water while on the site and and DC has determined that the site is very low risk in terms of affecting environmental or human health and they've also determined that they don't think that the contamination has the contamination doesn't have much it won't spread very far they don't think it's going to spread very far and the primary I guess the primary concern would be wells and the closest wells located 350 feet away and it's it's located in sort of the opposite direction of the ground water flow so it's not not a concern and then the spring the fall monitoring that was done indicated that the contaminant concentrations has had decreased but we're still above Vermont ground water enforcement standards if not to just just one I believe so DC is recommending at this point not to do any additional cleanup just to continue to monitor and let the the contaminant levels naturally subside until they're at acceptable standards they DC has recommended that the town enroll in the Brella program which is the brownfields reuse and environmental liability limitation program in order to limit the town's future environmental liability associated with this limited soil contamination we are intending to submit an application to the Brella program we have not yet submitted that application the application fee would be covered by the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission as well as the cost to conduct an updated phase one environmental assessment which would be required for that and then so what happens with enrollment in Brella is that at the time that the contaminants have decreased the acceptable level the state issues a certificate of a completion letter which basically says the issues been taken care of and correct me if I'm wrong it won't be reopened in the future so that's the there are some benefits to the to enrolling in Brella which Sean can explain if you have questions about that as far as the conservation easement is concerned the Vermont Land Trust would like to temporarily exclude from the conservation easement this thousand square foot or I guess it's two thousand square foot which amounts to point zero eight acres of land until the state determines closure of the issue at which time the area can be included back into the easement and TPLs made some inquiries and determined that this environmental issue doesn't affect the community forest program grant or any other sources of funding nor does it affect the appraised fair market value of the property so I will stop there and and I think we you know if you have questions at this point before we go on right this would be a good time to just take up this issue and then hopefully go on from there so Sean do you have anything to add to that's it that's a good summer then the members of the board have questions for either Melinda or Sean regarding the issue so I guess if this was going on last I don't remember this is when I saw this come out this was the first time I heard about this did we did we know about this this contamination last year so in the fall of 2017 I was notified that there was an underground storage tank and that it was being removed and cleaned up and taken care of by the McCullis so at that point in time I didn't see it as an issue I you know my it was my understanding it was being taken care of and what I didn't know is the state process you know can some it can sometimes take a long time to completely resolve you know resolve the environmental issues so that I was aware of that so you talk about if it's a very low risk is that what they said very low if it's very low risk then why do you need to enroll in this Brella thing if it's very well it's quite simply a the Brella program provides liability protection so it's low there's there's high medium low risk and we would consider this low risk in terms of very low low okay so it's not very low it's low it's a low risk we it's a yeah it's a it's classified as a low risk or low priority site meaning that the potential threats to human health in the environment are considered low and so again the direct exposure risks are low because the contamination it's an underground storage tank that leaked there's no official contamination so it's mostly some kind of a groundwater issue more than a water skiers or bikers becoming getting in contact with fuel or whatever was in the tank yes gasoline I believe the tank was officially abandoned or was put out of use I think in the 50s yeah in the 50s I was gonna say so it's been a long time unused if the land trust excludes this couple thousand square feet until the state deems it's clear it's clean and clear who owns it and or where's the ownership or the liability then you still own the land it's just the easement won't cover that under the easement until the sides you being the town okay my understanding correct me if I'm wrong about the brella benefits of the brella program is if sometime in the future the state's rules change and the standards become more I mean the standards become more stringent they can't reopen the site and say actually you need to clean it up more because our standards have changed and so it protects the town in that sense that's one aspect that's one benefit of participating in the brella program I think what it boils down to is that if the town takes ownership of the property it is a it is an active has site with patrolling contamination in groundwater so without enrolling into the brella program you're accepting liability for that issue it's a liability in the state of Vermont is joint in several so anyone in the in the chain of title if even if they did not cause a release is liable in understate statute can you give us some idea what that means I mean what I don't have any feeling for liability and so the the the unknown volume of gasoline leaked from that tank at some point in the past we've done soil borings and monitoring wells and we've assessed that there's two wells one being right in the source area where the tank was that have groundwater exceedances of the applicable enforcement standards so the other two that are downgrading are clean so there's no detect in those wells so it's a very discreet location where we have seen contamination and it's at depth there's no drinking with the one drinking water well nearby is is sufficiently far away and upgrading of the release so we don't consider that a sense of receptor there's no there's no surface water bodies nearby we don't get another potential sensitive receptor it's been eliminated or air issues have been eliminated because there's no buildings other than the barn that are right nearby and so all this keenly Lee puts this at a low priority for the sites management section right I understand and it sounds you know reasonably low it's just I'm trying to understand what it is what is a low liability I mean if this were to come up as a problem for the town it does that what does that mean what is it can you well it's no low priority I wouldn't say it's low liability per se the liability is currently with the current property owner so as Melinda explained they've enrolled or they've successfully been out deem belegable for reimbursement through the petroleum cleanup fund so there they their insurance policy didn't cover such a loss they were not aware of the underground storage tank at the time they purchased the property and so the that that means that they're eligible for reimbursement up to in this particular case up to 1.2 million dollars because it's associated with a farm it's agricultural be different if it was a residential underground storage tank the tank was utilized when the farm was operational so if we take it over does that liability then transfer to the town or does it stay with the McCullis or that the liability well this is this is where the Brella program comes in so if you come into the Brella program you are and it's and it's you know you take the appropriate due diligence which is already underway then you are excluded from that channel liability there's really no downsides to the program except for the application fee which so basically if we if we is there any acceptance criteria that we could fail or we I know so we basically get in the program and then we would if we acquire the property the town does then we have no liability essentially yeah so we're going to expect you know the agency will expect to see ongoing monitoring to see contaminate trends if they're increasing stable or decreasing if they are increasing and on these monitoring costs are all covered under the PCF they're all PCF eligible so that's we've already been paying for that because you just said if we enroll in that program where it's all the ball liability there's you once you receive your certificate of completion in the Brella okay because that's a big difference from saying absolve from all liability the minute you enroll so that's not yeah so what does that put this in a better perspective for me on a scale I'm going to do this I think this might help on a scale of zero to ten where is your low probability fall low low priority yeah that's a never thought of it that way we in the agency as project managers site managers we assign sites either high medium or low priority for going back to your risk question yeah potential risks to human health of the environment so that puts it at three or four or five you have no idea sorry that's an I've never had to rank them in terms of one to ten before that's coming from the EMT background so I just okay I'm still concerned with the whole Brella liability thing so I don't understand it either so I'm with you so the if if we receive a Brella application and we deem it administratively complete and we are we support the reuse plans this one's a little different because it's already on it's already a phase two process where we're already assessing groundwater quality typically these types of things Brella enrollment occurs before proper or before any site investigation has occurred other than a phase one so we're ahead of the head of the curve here a little bit so base so sort of hypothetically here if I receive a Brella application from the town of Yellowstone and we go through it together and we agree that the reuse proposed reuse of property in this case wouldn't cause contributor worse into any of the site contamination we would just ask that again in this case active remediation is not warranted it's a low risk or low priority so we would ask for continued ongoing monitoring perhaps every spring we have to consult and go back out and collect groundwater samples and to assess trends and once those contaminant concentrations are below regulatory standards we would consider the the site assessment complete so is the liability does the liability go away no no so so as an active participant in the Brella program we as the participant acting in good faith continuing due diligence we would the state of Vermont would not pursue any enforcement actions we wouldn't you know there would be you would be considered in this case a eligible prospective purchaser for the property meaning there's there's categories of prospective purchaser or current innocent landowner in the state's infinite way of changing their regs quite frequently yeah I don't know if you realize I'm an attorney and I deal highly with residential and commercial real estate so I don't want to see the town getting into something that they're going to buy and enroll in a program where suddenly the regs skyrocket to a whole different level I don't know I know you can't give any assurances because that's not what you can do but that's that's going to be a huge underlying concern for me to make sure that all of a sudden we're not hit with a set of standards we can't possibly understand so right now the only contaminants were monitoring our petroleum related you know we're not testing through PFAS which is a big hot bite and contaminant today it's just petroleum related analysis that we're doing and as I mentioned all of these costs are assessment costs are covered under the PCF and Is it safe to assume though that there's a grandfathering phase or a cause of some sort so that somebody who's been rolling out in four years for now your standards have switched and they've raised the bar at four levels that we're still going to be held to the level that we came in at? Yes because you're going to do your due diligence you're going to do you're going to update the phase one which Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission has said that they're going to pay for so that's a requirement to have a current phase one and you're going to continue to again act in good faith and comply with agency expectations so continued monitoring of the of the contamination not trying to be you have to I'm sure you have followed because I'm waiting I'm like coming out first of all full disclosure shown and I work for the same department and actually our work responsibilities overlap to a degree so I just want to make you aware of that. I don't speak the same language so this is good. We sometimes do but believe it or not we often don't and that was but first of all where the heck on the site is was this gas gas tank. And was that found in the site environment? It was found during the phase one environmental site assessment. I wanted to find out where that gap was okay. Thank you. And then as that's getting pulled up maybe one thing that would help is first of all Sean how common are these low risk type gas tank. I don't know what the right word is sites for lack of a better way. I'd say it's more common to see you know higher priority sites given the close proximity to sensitive receptors drinking water supply wells surface waters indoor basements indoor air issues so when you have when you have dissolved phase contamination plumes migrating off site migrating toward drinking water supply wells. Someone's basement nearby that may cause a vapor intrusion issues. Those are all factors that raise it up in terms of priority. This one is fairly isolated. There's but there's like thousands around. Yeah. Oh yeah there's there's I personally manage several dozen active has sites. That was a little bit more where I was going so we are nowhere near an uncommon situation where actually probably a relatively common situation. Sean my next question is about if you were to be an advisor to the town and we were to ask the question well what is the worst case scenario we could be looking at down the road. How would would you be able to explain that to us. How would you do that in this particular scenario where we've got an old gasoline tank that was associated with the farm that was utilized for onsite utility vehicles. We've done a fairly we've done a site assessment. We've done some follow up testing. We found that it's again it's a low priority. I would say you know if I had to put a worst case scenario on it. I don't know where the property boundaries are. I was the road. It's all which is all but it's all going to be just the north side is going to be. Oh I see. The road in this picture is I see. So that's where the cutoff is you know you when you talk about dissolve phase plumes migrating off site. That's that affects someone else's property. That tends to trend toward a bad scenario. You know. And then this plume goes north. Exactly. That's where groundwater does flow. We it direction is north on this is it. Straight up top. Okay. So straight up. And we've got. Right. We've got monitoring well three and four that are clean which are north and down gradient of the source area. So that these are all very favorable site characteristics that you know I don't I don't see a you know a worst case scenario here. Let's just say let's just say part of the reuse plans at some point in the future involved putting a structure right there where you'd have to dig up soils to put down a slab or something like that. That would raise concern and we would have in the COC there would be there would be language such that you know that area is identified as a as contamination and that if any future uses to occur there you need to notify us first. Not saying it can't be done just you need to notify us we need to see a soil management plan. You know where the soils are going to go how they're going to be disposed. Things like that. So if you wanted to put a drinking well I guess a well for drinking water or a structure there than that would require some special hand. Yeah. Yeah. The COC is recorded in the land in the deed in the deed. So in that COC there will be a map that probably this that identifies where the tank was. And there'll be like a land use restriction saying before any work is to occur there notify the agency so that we're aware of that. And then Melinda actually two quick questions for you. There are two acronyms in here that I don't know the meaning of the LT on the last paragraph. And trust. OK OK the Vermont land trust and TPL trust for public land. OK I just wanted to make sure make sure. And then my last question has to do with there's the mention of the drinking water well. Are there multiple wells we should be worried about or no. I've only seen the one well that's there's a little blue dot on that map. OK. Colour property. Right. So that's the only one I'm aware of. OK. And the 350 feet how should we view that 350 feet. Is that a lot. Is that a. Yes. I would say so. And it's up gradient. OK. That that well we have in our court. We've had some brief conversations with Ellie environmental as well. And we've said that during the next. Monitoring event I've asked for them to sample that well as part of the monitoring. Do we know is that well a deep well or is it a bedrock well or is likely a bedrock well. OK. Which would be a good thing. Yeah. Yeah that to me is but that will that be determined during the next step of the phase one. No the that would be eating the sampling. Well the concept of how. Oh that'll probably be in the phase one. Yes. Thank you. OK. This part of the property isn't in the phase one because it wasn't what we were buying. So we could ask them to specifically sample the well as part of the phase one update but right now it wouldn't be. And I'm sure the world the world data must be available somewhere. Yeah. Yeah. Actually there's there's in the phase one they do a radius. They search a radius between a quarter and a half mile. And if they and they what they do is they simply say that there's X number of supply wells within a quarter mile of the site. And they will they can provide well construction details in a phase one. OK. There's there's no sampling involved in a phase one. It's more of a desktop type of record review in a report. And that's all that's warranted in this case. Well we're already into a phase two. We're already doing. Yeah. The phase one is is is needed to be eligible as a participant in the program. I'm sorry. I misinterpreted. So it's the phase two that will be completed. And then hopefully the COC certificate of completion. After the phase two we are going to want to see a corrective action plan. So that is a report from the consultant that says we've got enough data to extrapolate any trends. And they'll summarize site history and they'll say these are our proposed corrective actions. One could be dig up any remaining contaminated soil properly disposed. Or in this case what I envision is potentially maybe some limited soil removal and some capping with clean sand and then long term monitoring. OK. So every year we'll go out we'll collect samples maybe twice a year. You know to start off when these are all costs again that are eligible through the PCF that we'll be paying for. OK. And do you envision or this is more maybe for Melinda down the road as the town potentially will own this own property in this area. Will this impact that if the if a drinking water well needs to be installed where it's located. I think the answer to that you have to be a sat straight. I don't know. You have to ask Sean for one. And I think he says whether you know if we had to do a structure they'd have to assess it because we'd have to be digging in that ground in a well. But also we need some assessment. I mean you wouldn't. I don't see any reason why you would want to put a well right there. It's more I'm trying to understand down the roads what are the potential impacts. And really my question was about as assuming the town owns this as we're trying to pursue whatever goals we're pursuing for the property one of them might be we need water. And if the answer to that is yes how big of an impact could this potentially be on finding a source of what I assume the best source will be will be groundwater. Yeah there this enrollment into the Brella even even it simply being listed as an active site doesn't preclude any drilling of a water supply well just needs to be we need we would need to review and approve where the well is located and we'd likely consult with our colleagues in drinking water supply. Just out of curiosity do are we are we anticipating providing potable water as part of to support the activities that go on the property. They do that now right. Well they do that now through cat amount right the town may not do that as owners of the property. You know for the annual mud bog will listen mud bog we're going to need a big source of water. I'm sure we'll need water. It's just I'm just trying to understand what this is the kind of the first we have heard about this. So just trying to understand some of the liabilities and I'm not hearing anything I think is are shaking. One of the questions was answered by Sean. I was concerned about you said as long as we continue with our due diligence I wasn't clear exactly what that meant and I was concerned that we would have yearly costs for monitoring but it sounds like the program takes care of that. Well the PCF takes care of that. Yeah and in this petroleum cleanup fund. So the I guess due diligence continuing obligations would be to as I envision this to is to do continued sampling to assess contaminant trends and we're not doing the sampling. We would just want to see it to continue. It doesn't we don't necessarily that's taken care of under Bella correct. That's what we're trying to get at is what is the continuing obligation of the town. Are there continuing fees every year for being in this program. So once you pay what's the one time. It's there's an application fee of $500. Okay. I got that part and then it's this continued monitoring. Right. We would want to typically what happens on all the other sites throughout the state of Vermont is that the property owner has a qualified environmental consultant and they provide me or any other site manager with work plan cost estimate to do these annual sampling events. We review it and approve it and they do it and they submit a report to you and to me and with conclusions and recommendations. And that's paid through the PCF. The town has to manage it. Right. PCF pays for it. Is that what you're saying? It's correct. So appropriate. Maybe the town's responsibility to ensure the annual or twice annual whatever the requirements is monitoring actually occurs. It's our responsibility. That would be our responsibility. And I would say that it's once once we've selected a corrective action, i.e. continue long term monitoring your consultant will have that flagged on a yearly or. Yeah. And now basically contact me and say, listen, it's spring 2019. And here's our work plan cost estimate for sampling the catamount outdoor center site. Is it just again, this is more of a curiosity than anything. Is it the type thing where the consultant bills your program directly or does it go through the bill us directly? Okay. So we don't even see. You certainly welcome to look at it, but we don't actually see the bill itself. If you will. Okay. And there's specific PCF rates. So. Okay. It's kind of like insurance. Yeah. So I don't know if this is helpful or not, but we worked with the town of West Windsor two years ago, a very similar project where they bought the old Scutney ski area. And they had a maintenance shed where lots of things were dumped down the drain. And that was a much more serious issue and the town enrolled in Brella and it's being cleaned up and everybody's happy. But if you, if you want kind of contact information for the folks at West Windsor and want to talk to them, I'm happy to connect you. If you want to talk about their experience with that on their town forest. I personally think that's probably not a bad idea to at least follow up with a phone call and everything from we can't believe to. Yeah. Yeah. Went smooth and great and no issues. Okay. I believe, I believe as the municipality, this just occurred to me that you are eligible for your certificate of completion upon subs, you know, if the work is substantially complete. So we've, we've done the, we've, we've had your consultant do a corrective action report. We've selected a corrective action remedy. And then it's implemented. And as long as those continuing obligations are achieved, then, then we would have no reason to, you know, ask you for any additional work. So the corrective action. Sorry. It's there's layers to this. It seems that's fine. Yeah. The corrective action. So you monitor, you come up with a corrective action. That is the correct. I mean, in this particular situation, I would feel comfortable saying that the. Well, monitoring is the corrective action. Exactly. We're not necessarily seeking active remediation. There's no. No soil removal. I don't see the need for it right, you know, right now. I mean, if one of the future monitoring courts showed a huge spike and something different, then they might change their mind and say, actually, we want to dig this up. Okay. And the PCF fund would pay for that. And they would. Yes. In my worst case scenario, let's say that spike happens. All of a sudden there's a much bigger issue than we had anticipated previous monitoring has shown us from the town's perspective. It'll be a pain, but at least it won't be a cost impact because the Brella, did I say it right? Our insurance, if you will, through the Brella will cover those costs, even if there's significantly more because more action is needed because of the spike. Accurate? Generally, that's pretty accurate. Is it Brella or PCF who would pay for it? It's going to say PCF, but the liability is covered. Okay. The liability protections are covered through the Brella. Yeah. Okay. Program. Yeah. Okay. Tell us what happened to begin with when they discovered this. Was it excavated and say it was taken away from the site? Yes. There were. One identified that their, the phase one is a records review. They go all the way back as far as they can and they noted that there was an underground tank there associated with the barn. So that was a red flag. They said, we need to investigate. They did that and they found this contamination. They got rid of the tank as well. They poured that. As well as 110 gallons of gasoline, right? Sludge material. Yeah. Any further questions for Sean on this before we moved on to the next part? Just the only thing, it's just, it seems odd that it's coming up so late that if we knew about this, we should have maybe brought this to the board. When we found out about it to have this show up on the day that you're asking for funding. It's kind of great. It wasn't really till November, it was after Thanksgiving, November 27th that the monitoring court that showed most cleanup. And that was, I mean. Right. But you had already taken action to do some cleanup. It seems like. Yeah. I mean, we also did a lot of things with the title that needed to be solved that we don't want to bring to the select board at the very beginning. And we were trying to, we did our due diligence and we were meeting up. Okay. Kind of all parts of that survey title. If you'd probably agree, I would love to have had those beforehand. But they did this, exactly correct. You just don't know when you get into what you need them to have. And I guess I'll add that, you know, you can submit your application. We can work together and there's no penalties for early withdrawal or anything like that. We have the application to start ready. So we may be submitting that as soon as tomorrow, I think, right? What's the acceptance process and for brolif? If it's submitted, how long does that take a week? Pretty, pretty well caught up to speed on this site already. So we're going to move on to the next issue. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks very much. Yeah, so the second update we had was about the appraisal. So the first appraisal and multiple revisions that were requested from our federal, the federal review appraiser still didn't meet federal review. And that's not to say that the appraisal was wrong or incorrect, but that the appraisal didn't meet the yellow book standards, the way that the review appraiser wanted them to. So we had to start over with a new appraiser. And that has been approved by a different federal review appraisal appraiser. And it is above the 1.6 million. Can you say what was wrong with the original appraisal? It was it was more kind of the methods and assumptions that were made. They didn't see eye to eye the reviewer and the appraiser. So it got kind of into a change both both the reviewer and the appraisal. Well, we actually hired the review appraiser to do this, the second appraisal. And we hired a different review appraiser to review him. That makes sense. Partly because he's an expert and we just wanted it done quickly. And it was already familiar with property because he had been the review appraiser. Do we see that appraisal anywhere? Do we get a copy of that? You'll get it in closing. The original arrangement we made, we talked about that. It was an issue about confidentiality. We made it a condition that we would see it before closing. Let's close it. We don't know yet. We'd like to schedule it. We were trying to schedule it for the end of January. But with the federal government shut down, it'll more likely be mid-February or 30 days after the government starts working again. So that's what's holding up closing now. And your approval with the environmental issue. Can I ask Rick a question for you? As we were pushed last year, it seemed like to quickly get through some of the stuff. It seemed like a hurry. And it wasn't really because obviously this hasn't closed as quickly as we or people were at least implying it might or needed to. Jim hasn't ran for the hills and done a deal with anybody else. I didn't expect that either. But is there any reason that we were approving spending the money today versus when we, you know, closer to closing? Actually, the board would be entirely appropriate if we wanted to wait a few more weeks. I have no problem with that. I will say though that... It'd be nice to know about the brelithing closing being signed. And actually, I'm still a little disappointed in being asked to spend money before we can see the appraisal. And not that I'm going to, I'm not an appraisal expert, obviously, but it just seems like an odd thing to do. But I guess before you actually sign the check, we'll see it. We will, yes. Okay. So the town in December applied for Atlanta Water Conservation Fund to decide the amount out of 280,000. We had originally discussed with you that we were going to apply for 200,000 in the amount of kind of the extra that the town was going to put in above what your original idea from the... We were going to be 400,000 and it went to six, right? We got a 600. Yes. Okay. And the reason we applied for 280,000 is that after all the shaking of trees and possible, I mean, we have fundraised hard near and wide with all public sources, private sources possible, and we're still at $60,000 short. So trust public land is prepared to put in our own funding into capital at closing with the hope that some of the LWCF funds can reimburse us for that. The purchase and sale amendment would address that because right now the purchase and sale agreement between the town and trust public land just mentions 200,000 from LWCF state side potential. And right now the way I drafted it, it basically says the first 200 will come back to the town and then anything above that will come to TPL up to 60,000 and then the last 20 would come back to the town as a stewardship endowment fund for future management expenses on the property. And what I'd like to ask you to consider is whether you would be willing to kind of share the risk with us. And instead of having kind of the first 200 come to the town and if it's over 200, then we get some reimbursement that you'd be willing to kind of, you know, if the award was 150, you know, you guys would get 120 and we'd get 30 or something like that. I was going to suggest that we should get 200 and 20 before you. I would. Because the 20K was also part of the plan that we proposed. Same as our budget the way it is. I'm not inclined to do that, but. To get it all, to get everything we were supposed to get from. So just so I understand, where was the 20K coming from originally because we originally only had a $200,000 grant, right? The 200,000 request to LBCF states. The 20,000 in the state of the stewardship endowment was coming from trust public lands fundraising. So that was part of the bucket that we felt that in spite of all the work you've done is falling short. Okay. So were you. And we did say from the beginning that that's the last money in. That we need to cover our costs first before the stewardship endowment. $83 short. Yes, we'll be putting, we'll be putting 62 and yeah, we adjusted our budget. Taking that out and then we'll be putting 60 something into. Capital closing. Unless I mean, we still have some requests out there. If we're pleasantly surprised over the next month or so. Great, but. Hold your breath. I'm a little confused by all the math that's going on. That's fine. Maybe the best way is for me to ask, what is the potential that we don't reach the goal? And I don't even know exactly what the goal is because it sounds like trust for public land may put up to 60 or 80,000 in. I guess I'm asking the question of what is the risk we won't reach that minimum amount that needs to be in place in order to make the purchase. Does that make sense that question? I'm trying to, I'm trying to understand. We, we, we right now we're still short. It sounds like we're short by a small amount, but we're still short. We don't know what the potential for additional money to come in through your fundraising efforts. So I guess I'm asking the question of, is there the potential that we won't be able to get to some minimum amount that allows the purchase to go forward? No, we're prepared to put in. Yeah, they're prepared to put the money in. Okay. They're getting this waiver back whereby we would be in reverse and potentially they would too. And that's the part I want to just make sure I understood. So what they're asking for is in the event that the waiver is less than, we were promised 200,000 and we get that. If it's less than that, will we still be willing to give some money back? Right. It's a competitive grant. So we don't know what we're going to get. We don't know if we're going to get the 200,000. Exactly. Okay. And then they're asking for more. This is what I'm trying to understand is this kind of piece that's a little bit in flux. So I'm not asking for the town to put in any more money. I'm asking that if we get the grant and it would be great if we could get a portion of that grant, even if it was less than 200. I would suggest that the 200,000, if we do give up less than that, that is, we are giving up more than what we had said we were going to give. Right. But there's the possibility we may get zero grant. Right. So that's the town's risk. That's a lot of risk. So anyway, I've already had this discussion with you. So I think, I don't know if you got that now, Jeff, but basically they're prepared to buy now because the TPL is going to put in the extra 60, some odd thousand dollars to close the deal of their own money. The $200,000 was supposed to be brought back to the town in the form of a, if we receive this grant, what they're suggesting now is that instead of just $200,000, they're going to add another $80,000 to that. Right. 60 to pay back the TPL. And then 20 for the stewardship. But they're putting that at the very end. They're suggesting that, well, initially they're suggesting $200,000 goes to the town, then TPL takes the next 60 if there is such funds in the grant. And then the last piece would be the stewardship. They're asking us if we would maybe take less than $200,000 if the grant doesn't go up to 260. So I think the whole premise of the purchase and our participation was based on putting in $400,000 with hopefully low risk on the extra $200,000. So I think we would probably, for the taxpayers, want to get the full amount back. I don't know. That would be my opinion. And I have to think about that a little bit because it's the Environmental Reserve Fund that's impacted, if I remember correctly. So it wouldn't necessarily affect taxes, but it would affect the health of the Environmental Reserve Fund. It's taxpayer money. Oh, yes. I'm not belittling that. But I just, I look at those as two separate, not separate related, but separate things. We have used the Environmental Reserve Fund to purchase many things. This is just another way of looking at it is kind of the way I'm feeling about this is how strong is our desire to buy this property. If our desire is kind of on the lower end, maybe we wouldn't be willing. I think there's a lot of need in the desire. The point, Jeff, is that even if we don't get as penny from this additional grant, we have the money in place to buy that land. Right. It means the town would have to contribute 600,000 to the 400,000 way. We're hoping to contribute. And the trust for Propaganda would be on the hook for 60,000, or 80,000. Okay. But my point is, is that it's coming out of the Environmental Reserve Fund that 600,000 or 400,000, whatever it ultimately ends up being. So it's not, we don't have to budget for this expenditure. It's already in a fund that was set up for these types of purchases. The liability is going to be, is if it's 600,000, our Health of Our Environmental Reserve Fund is worse or less, or whatever you should financially say that, then if the expenditure out of it is only 400,000. Is that correct? It was set up this one way, and then it's now changed. Now it's coming back to something else. I get that. Right. I have a problem. We went into this thinking it would be a 400,000 ERF expenditure, and now it's... It's based on... Potentially we're asking to take... This is all right. I'm okay with that, but I'm not okay with saying if we get less than that, that we're going to give some back. No. That's my personal opinion. Okay. Good. If that's a consensus of the board, which I suspected that would be the case, there's still the other issue about if we do get a grant that exceeds 200,000, what happens to that money, and how is that distributed? Because right now we've only planned on at the most receiving 200,000. Then I'm fine with it, because that was what you expected. You entered into this with the belief that that's what you were going to get back. If you want to give the excess back to the trust for public land, I don't necessarily have a problem with that, and if we're lucky enough to have money left over after that for the Storeship Fund, great. The only thing I'll say in difference is we kind of expected the 20K in the Storeship. That was part of the fundraising deal. That was what was supposed to come in. That was our plan, was to have the 200,000 in the grant. The 20,000 came from their fundraising. It was part of the closure of the deal. But as Kate said, that was the last 20,000. Yes. I'm less passionate about it, although... I kind of feel the same way, because it was the last part of the deal. The Purchase and Sale Amendment basically just says that that the LWCF money that we applied for was greater, and that's how it would work. Then it also just briefly mentions our encouragement to enroll in the Brella Program and acknowledgment of the environmental issue. So it's pretty straightforward. Just, sorry, one last question. The 280, you're not going to be applying for more than 280. No, we applied in December. So that's set and done, okay. Melinda and I will be giving a presentation to the committee next Friday, and they'll make decisions beginning in March. How competitive is this grant program? Well, two years ago, when I was on the committee to judge the grants, there were only three applicants applying. For a total of $600,000. This year, I think there were 14 applicants, but they have more money this year, too. And I have no idea how much the other groups are applying for. So we'll see. Okay. I don't know. Yeah, okay. I mean, this is the perfect project for LWCF Seaside Funds. It's a perfect fit. I think we're going to get something, whether we get the 280. Good, thank you. I'll hold my breath. Okay. Along with the Land and Water Conservation Fund requirements, there are some language deep, deep, deep in the manual about any licenses that are held on properties funded by LWCF Seaside. So if we were to get the LWCF grant, there would need to be some changes to the license agreement with Katamon Door Family Center. There will also be some minor changes to the conservation easement that don't contain any significant changes. It's mostly about, you know, grant agreements and that is going to be used for recreation. Actually, on that conservation easement, I copied the pages. Okay. They were changed. And so, oh, okay, good. And because we're planning on closing before we find out the LWCF, the language is kind of spring. It'll say, if the town were to receive the LWCF grant, then this is true. And the changes to the license agreement were also pretty minor. Both McCullis and Katamon Door Family Center have agreed to them. So they are in your packet if you care to review them now. They're also stated in the LWCF changes related to... So if we're not for the federal shutdown, would you be pursuing closing now? We are pursuing closing now. I mean, we're finalizing all the documents. We can't set a closing date until everything has been reviewed by the U.S. Forest Service and approved. Okay. I imagine knowing the person who's going to be reviewing it, that he'll be able to turn it around in two to three weeks, depending on what else is on his plate when he gets back to work. But if it lasts months, then we have to wait. Okay. The request is at this point to make three motions to do certain things. We're ready to do that. And actually, there will be a fourth item concerning the conservation of these issues as well. So my suggestion would be let's take it up in a later meeting. We'll put it all together as one package. And we'll have hopefully more updates. Okay. So we're going to shelve all of them? Okay. Any questions about the changes to the lease agreement? The lease? The license? So my only question is the statement, and I don't have it up right now. I've got it on here. But the statement about fees, about charging fees. And I thought the wording was funny. It was something about substantially higher than market fees. Why was that? Was that a complete ad? Why was that put in there? Because the LWCF requires that all fees charged by the lessee concessionaire must be competitive with similar private facilities. So that was actually the word we first put in. And Rick responded, well, what if they're lower? You know, we want them to be lower. Yeah, exactly. Right. So then we changed the language to say we don't want them to be higher than similar facilities. But it's okay if they're lower than similar facilities. But it says, I thought the wording was funny if you really wanted them to be lower. It says they're not significantly lower. Significantly more. Significantly charged. Right. So then in place. So there are, so I gave an example of seven different places around Vermont, both winter and summer mountain biking places that charge fees. And there is some difference between the seven. Not substantially, but you know, you got to kind of take an average. Yeah, exactly. Because the way you've got it. Well, the zip doesn't require it to be less. It requires it to be competitive. Right. But the point is for someone reading this that says, okay, it looks like it has to be competitive, but we have no obligation to do that. They could be less. Yes, absolutely. That clarifying which might help. I read it the same way. Yeah. It looks odd. It looks. If you want to put it lower, how can you can't? Yeah. So we're not significantly more. I don't know. Why would they be more? Just at the end of the sentence, but maybe less than, or something like competitive or, or less than, or less than typical fees. Yeah. Yeah. I like that. The not significantly more is kind of a funny way to make it sound right. It seems like Rick maybe agrees with me. All right. Competitive or less than works for me. Thank you. I think we're finished with this topic for tonight. So thank you very much. Thank you. So it's just as a summary. I'm sorry. Kate, Kate, I'm sorry. How much money did you end up raising at the end of the day? Total. It was right in the beginning. One point. Well, I mean, taking out your 600 or 400 point, I mean the whole project budget is 1.9. Right. I knew it was more than the 1. So we raised 1.855, including your 600. Because the mama said they fabulous. They're a big help. Looks like they had it too. So we're a little bit past time for the public hearing. So I will call open the public hearing by on the charter revisions and read the, the notice under the authority of 17 VSA section 2645. The Wilson select board will hold a public hearing to receive public count on proposed amendments to the Wilson town charter hearing. We hold on Tuesday, January 8th, 2019 at 7.30 p.m. at town meeting, town hall meeting room. This is the second of two public hearings required under state law before the amendments can be considered by Australian ballot at town meeting. So Eric, I think you probably are the person to explain briefly what the public hearing is about tonight. Sure. I'll, I'll head on the substantive section of the charter that has been discussed previously here. So some of the major sections under consideration are reviewed here on section 13 language, current language talks about an annual meeting starting at 7. Language will allow more flexibility for the time to be determined year to year. Section 14, the proposal to change the position of treasurer from elected to appointed. Section 14, addition to this section provides the appointment of the town clerk's position, only if the town so votes separately from any vote on the charter. This was provision has been approved in the legislature in 2017 for that, for a town to have that take place. And also in section 14, prison state law in 2003 to allow the elimination of the office of Lister. There may be a time in the future when the town wants to have either the position of appointed or eliminated. This proposal just provides this as an option. It requires the town vote at that point. This enables that. Along those lines, proposals to eliminate the position of town constable as an elected position if approved. The board could still appoint someone to that role if the board chooses. Those two, this would just eliminate that it would have to be an elected position. A paragraph added in section 15 to allow the select board to create appointed positions that are not specifically referenced in the charter. Also in section 15, proposal will eliminate the requirement to appoint a pound keeper. A pound keeper has not been appointed by the select board. Also in section 15, position of town service officer will no longer be required if approved. If the board is still appointing someone to that position, we would be interested. We have a new town service officer that will be appointed. The other sections are in the charter are consistency with these major substantive changes to make sure everything flows correctly and the references are accurate. There are a couple of clarifications were added after the first public hearing and those were added to the latest charter proposal which has been posted in anticipation of this public hearing this evening. So this is the time now for members of the public to weigh in on any of the proposals that are being brought forward. Is there anybody in the audience who wishes to make any comment regarding the proposed charter revisions? Seeing no one wishing to speak, a motion to close the public hearing would be in order. So moved. Is there a second? Any discussion on the motion? Did we receive comments or any other mechanism? Emails, voice. Okay. All those in favor of the motion to close the public hearing say aye. Aye. Any opposed? We'll move on to the charter change revision and Eric I think you had a small revision that you were requesting us to take up. Just some language in section 14 to require some to be a registered voter to run and hold local office. Town clerk Deb Beckett pointed this out and I was in agreement to strike qualified and replace it with registered voter and that is aligned with state statute. So I would recommend if the board is interested to also amend the charter change to include that revision. Questions regarding the request? Yes, Rick. I don't have a question on that question. It's not anything that requires an action tonight by the board but it's something I want you to think about and the question is how do we frame the question of this charter approval to the public. And there's multiple ways of doing that. One way is to have one question and kind of I don't know what language you need but refer to all the changes recommended by the select board or the other is to break it out into five or six different questions or you can do however obviously you have to have at least one but you can have as many as you want too. And so I guess at some point I'm going to need some direction on which way you'd like to approach it. Basically the things we just rattled off, right? I'm inclined because of this one to have one question with it approved by the staff approved by the select board as opposed to lining out. I spoke with Beckett about it I was just curious to what her thinking was and I guess we talked about it and we said well if there were controversial issues like let's say we propose to something in there that was really controversial then we might want to pull out from all the others because then you know a vote against that one controversial item would essentially defeat the whole charter change. It would be to break it out in three pieces because there's two major things right and then a whole bunch of minor things together so the major ones are the treasure and the temp clerk and have those separate and then put the rest as a because the rest are kind of minor and then that's one way of doing it but then you have the town council and you talk about eliminate that as elected board or elected position and then you have the board of listers which is similar to the town clerks what do you think that's as weighty as that's ultimately it's not my call it's going to be the board's call as to how you want to approach it. I like the idea of one simple question that makes it easier but on the other hand is we are asking that the voters vote to change how they vote at town election and you know what they vote for and I think that's kind of significant so when we're asking when we're asking them to change for instance the town treasurer that will no longer be an elected position it goes to appoint it the town clerk is going to go from potentially go from elected to appointed so when we're when we're asking when those questions are at stake I think it's important that they be separated out how much further down we go I'm not sure so I think maybe you're suggesting that one other thing is significant and that's the listers so what do we break it up into four pieces then? I like at least the treasurer and the town clerk maybe the way of doing it is to take all the positions that you're talking about changing from right now from appointed to elected to appointed and group those in one category and then perhaps all the other changes are grouped together or you can because the position of town clerk we're really not changing all that we're not changing anything other than allowing the town at some point in the future if it wants to make that position from elected to appointed but we're not actually asking for that change now other than I mean when I say that that change I mean the actual physical change of making that appointed that's not what this is about and so I don't want people to get confused over that that one particular issue so but if we are you know so that is one way of doing it is just breaking out by those specific positions that are changing from appointed elected to appointed and that would be the constable and the treasurer I think of only two and maybe grouping that as one question and then whether we have two or three questions behind that I don't know the first grouping you were talking about the constable and the town treasurer that makes sense to me whether we need two or three or four subsequent questions I don't know I have to take a look at it without really seeing the language that's why I'm bringing it up now for you to think about it because you'll see hopefully the first draft of the warning a week from tonight but this issue won't be resolved at that point and then before the end of this month we'll have to make a choice on that it would be nice to see some warnings Eric be doing that for you we haven't figured out I've already started to work on it so we'll have to see so if we're wished to make that revision tonight regarding the the voter issue we need to have a motion to do that I'd move to revise the charter proposal as suggested by staff and direct staff to file an amended copy of the charter proposal with the town clerk second discussion on the motion hearing none all those in favor of the motion say aye opposed so we've done that part let's drop back to talk about with Bruce the sidewalk our maintenance request that we have since we did this last we had another request that actually came in just before the other ones were just half of the other ones but not in time to take a look at it before the meeting so anyway there's been another request this one from the resident in the heritage menor neighborhood wildflower circle and took a look at it through the criteria that we have and determined that it only meets two of the eight and we're not recommending that it be added to the list at this time so do you have any questions for Bruce regarding the issue we talked about this last time and decided that we needed to take another look at the policy right when will that come up so I'm I'll state I'm in agreement with Bruce and that heritage meadow meaning two of the current eight criteria is no different than the other ones we denied so as far as the answer to your question about scheduling I can't give it exactly at this point it probably won't be this month budget stuff it could be next month possibly or March at the latest so if there's if we agree with the staff's recommendation there's nothing that we need to do tonight warm stays warm and doesn't get any colder busy night otherwise so perhaps we can bring in Jennifer to talk about the general fund general administration Bruce will be back I think we can do the general administration budget before we do the public hearing I think hi Jennifer if you would be willing to try to get through the general administration part of the budget before we go into a public hearing on the budget only a few things on the capital budget mainly the operating budget I think it's in the big book on the operating budget general administration yes I'm going to go through general administration under the select board see a slight increase in the select board wages 2% cost of living that's what we have done in the past so where are we now in the so under general administration and I'm just going to I'm just going to walk through some of the highlights of changes in that area the next change is an increase in the select board regular expense to match the request from cctv cctv of $12,000 they were here and presented to us a while ago and said last year we had done $6,000 and they were requesting that everyone double their contribution because of some funding issues that they're having so we have included that request in our budget this year so basically the funding request doubled from 6 to 12 because of government funding downturns or state I don't recall the audience but I know that fable TV is finding increasing competition from very streaming services so I think their revenues are going down and they're squeezing the extra services like channel 17 they get a portion of their funding from cable networks and that has decreased so they're asking for additional support from towns under the this is what you're talking about is a one-time thing so it doesn't necessarily mean that next year no we do one year at a time but I think what you're suggesting is what cctv is asking for is only a one-time charge not a a tick because of an administrative thing that happened where they get their funding so the extra $6,000 I believe is just a one-time thing I think their request was when they were here and presented was just for this upcoming budget they asked us to increase so under the town manager's office you'll see increases for the manager salary and staff salary both cost of living increases office supplies have increased to include video equipment we don't currently have video equipment and Eric's doing a lot more with communication on our website needs some tools to do that before you move on can I just ask one question with the managers what is being reflected in the general administration is only 76% of the managers where the others are distributed across various departments under the utility budgets yes you'll see that in finance we talked about it in the clerk's office and so under building maintenance you'll see a slight decrease only a portion of that building maintenance is the utilities so some solar credits are being applied there so there's a slight decrease our discretionary wages we're also asking to decrease that this year both union contracts are in place so we're able to budget those departments appropriately based on contracts so it's our one-year off from negotiations under the finance department in the salaries is the finance director and bookkeeper salary and benefits under audit fees we're currently under contract with FatherGill's FatherGill's Segali in Valley through fiscal year 2019 I have budgeted 2020 to just be an estimate we don't have an auditor currently in place we will potentially take that out to bed or we will ask FatherGill to give us an extension due to the change over in the finance director position it's always good to keep your auditor in place so you don't have two changes happening at once it provides some consistency and they know what to look for that would be my recommendation under the board of Listers we're continuing with the same services that we've had in the past few years so no additional increases really in that area in technology you'll see there is an increase to computer application support we are continuing to explore managed IT services for fiscal year 2020 as manager's office has probably noticed since I'm not around the need for managed IT services is real and right now we currently are very reactive with our IT service so we call when we need support it's better to get on a plan where we're actually being proactive with that and they're coming in and checking our systems before there's issues instead of when there's issues so how does that work can you talk a little bit about that I mean I understand the concept is it the type of thing where they'll come out for hours a week or yeah everyone does their managed services a little differently so we would want to prepare an RFP and put that out to different companies to see what services they offer some people do what they come in to check things once a month they provide some office support here occasionally something like that they're all very different so we want to see what the town wants for those services and RFP but I've increased the budget slightly to maybe make that transition in 2020 not for the full year because we don't know what that cost is just yet but increasing it slightly to maybe provide that for half a year is our IT equipment just remote terminal basically and we use software as a service somewhere or do we have local applications on machines we have everything on a server right in the back corner there yes and most of our service that we use is our NEMRIC software which you'll talk about in our capital budget but that is our finance software our clerk software all of that and we actually currently own that software so it's not cloud based just curious why we haven't looked at software as a service just you will see that in the capital budget we are thinking about what is that next option for us when it comes to software our current software I'll just go into it now our current software is about 15 years old and it's owned by an individual who may be retiring at some point right now there's not a succession plan for him in his business is a very small operation we had an issue once and we had to wait for someone to get off a plane to help us so it's very small so that might not be the best thing for us in the future so it's something that we as a town need to start exploring what is that next step for us another interesting point to this is that most municipalities across state are in the same boat because they're using the same software so might we all get together on this or as a possibility yeah I think that's a really good idea to kind of look at what's out there and explore it the benefit of software as a service is just you don't have all that local installation it's basically on a server in what they call the cloud it's not local it's maintained outside and you have just basically your connections are just dumb terminals if you will they're PCs or laptops but it's managed remotely and the piece that we have to look into is a lot of our work comes from the state and we send information back and forth to the state so we want to make sure that we're getting something that connects with everything we don't be out there on our own with our own system but it doesn't talk to anything legal services we did have a change in our legal service this year we are lowering that amount based on the contract that we currently have in place with that may be I just for some reason the legal bills for this past month were up quite a bit so whether that continues or not it's a different matter but who's care of operating in the budget one quick little this is really almost funny I forget how I was looking at it was a report by the town manager in 1993 this is before I was manager here he was talking about the budget and he came to the legal services and he said of course we have budgeted $35,000 for that that's budget hasn't changed all that time it's gone down it's gone down it's a hard number to pick generally because you just don't know what's going to happen during the course year and so last year we were well under the $30,000 one year and we were way way over but most years were pretty close so anyway I just thought it was interesting $30,000 with Burt Burt Moffitt $35,000 $35,000 recommendation is $30,000 great any questions on the general administration great I did want to go over services real quick in the operating budget yes sure a couple of tabs over from that thank you these are our regional services and transportation services so all of our regional services those are requests that we get from these different organizations and a few changes this year Lake Iroquois is down based on their current request of us I believe they shared that with you directly and then we talked about this a little bit last time is changing we now have what is called the town clock lease in our budget and that is not an agreement that we have in place yet it's a suggestion of how we move forward last year that was $25,000 that we paid to the Williston Federated Church that was to repair this people not the lease right so it was just a repair and we're suggesting that instead of doing those large repairs every 20 years so that we just pay them a yearly lease amount to keep that clock and they'd be responsible for any repairs that need to happen I actually like that a lot just to make sure I understand the concept is in 25 years or so when the clock needs to go through another major repair we're expecting the church would not come to us and say we need to raise funds to do and have language at least to affect saying church's responsibility for maintaining and then under Green Mountain Transit the numbers that are currently in your budget documents are flat to last year as tape and reported to you the first meeting that we are seeing some increases and I believe that Rick has those actual numbers now and those should be on your report for possible budget changes I made a note we were supposed to see three to five yes I believe that is what it was right that's what he told us I have a question for three percent so it would be what we'd have to do is it's like I had about two thousand GMG bus service so it would be about one two or one actually I may even have more update number that I'll have to see I'm looking at an older list here but it's in that range eight to ten thousand and then the ADA program there's another seventeen hundred, eighteen hundred that would have to be added to that do we know what the bus ridership is? I don't have the information now I do have a meeting with the director of GMT a couple weeks so I'm assuming that he'll be providing information like that and I'll share that with the board I may even ask Mark Susan anyway I'm talking about the director the director to come in and talk to the board about giving them a little update we don't know what the county tax is yet I presume either we don't but we have budgeted for a slight increase in that their year is quite different than ours I believe it's February when our first payment is due it's really and the other increase that you'll see in there is under the employee health and safety programs there currently is a select board policy that talks about employee wellness programs and we have not been putting money toward that for the past and this is an increase that we'd like to do to provide some real wellness incentives to our employees we changed to the new plan this year and those wellness incentives that used to be built into the plan are now our responsibility and so we've added some money there for that as well as some safety programs so a trying to put on a financial responsibility looking at this requested increase would be we're going to see a corresponding decrease of sorts in our insurance premium there's two issues one is because of the new health insurance yes we did receive a decrease but long term the purpose of these wellness programs and health and safety is to impact the utilization of the health programs which theoretically will reduce our costs is there a causal relationship though I'm just trying to understand so we have these programs I'm sure everybody has these kinds of programs but certainly it has the potential to reduce insurance company payouts if people are healthier but is there any causal that actually reduces rates so I can't answer that question for you but I can tell you that having healthier safer employees is a benefit to the town so these are smoking cessation exercise flu shots oh sure absolutely just in regards to the that's fine sorry hi Prescott Natto I'm Prescott Natto and I'm just here to actually yeah there we go and I just want to speak to now I've got to look at cash so the causal relationship is really hard to I guess formulate when it comes to health and wellness specifically related to the range of employees that the town of Williston has because you can, you're talking everything from a firefighter to a librarian public works, police officers the whole nine yards and so it would be hard to say that you were just the smoking cessation wellness policies incentives to get into a gym and work out, discounts related to gym membership, things like that but the crazy thing is it's hard to dictate the job whether it be a librarian or a firefighter, just two random examples the amount of wellness incentives that are put forth that will allow us in whatever range of town jobs it is to take advantage of that and really incentivize us to get into a gym to eat healthier cut sugar out of our diet things like that it's hard to say the exact relationship there but I can tell you that if even one employee is saved from for example a multi-thousand dollar back injury because they were working on their core more in the gym or saved from that sudden cardiac arrest because of the healthier lifestyle related to diet then I think that again it's hard to give an exact number I think like you were trying to come up with as well but even just one employee in our town could benefit from those and I can tell you the programs as they're being rolled out still in its infancy I believe but are looking good so far that's all I got to say thank you thanks just to carry answering a different question health and wellness programs are always great just wondering if there's any relationship of actually driving down premiums and right now we're in an association so we will see if other towns are making the same changes and the association as a whole has less experience rating than our rate should theoretically come down is it even to say that rather than driving rates down it saves on out-of-pocket expenses with deductibles? absolutely it saves on that would you like me to do capital now or revenues? three pages for capital we just figured do that we had a public hearing yes we do it'll take very long to do these three pages okay page 23 page 23 and 74 and 75 well yep page 23 first of all page 23 is our building contingency fund and so this we started a few years ago and we've been trying to build this up to 30,000 dollars and it was we were trying to do 10,000 a year we did use a little bit of it last year so we're asking to fund that a little bit higher than the 10,000 to get that up to the 30,000 in three years and so as you'll see this was never intended to take place of projects that we know about which like the fire station is a great example of their HVAs or their boilers they actually know they need to replace them this year so they put in an actual request for that. This contingency fund is for those projects that we don't know are going to break mid-year and we want to have a capital fund in place so that we're not repairing something that is should be replaced so we're not spending tens of thousands of dollars to fix something that it would be more beneficial to the town to just replace it so this will get us up to that if we look at 73 74 and 75 73 is the electric vehicle charging station this one Eric might want to touch on a bit this one is a grant related project we submitted the grant in December it would be a charging station we locate behind the town hall here the local match requirement was just around $3,000 or so I'm asking for a grant of just under $30,000 we'll know if we get funded in January and if we don't get funded that round there's a second round in April I believe and this is using that Volkswagen settlement money the state is making grants for electric vehicle charging station so would this be open to the public or just town vehicles? it would be open to the public it's one of the requirements for the first year in our application if we charge to use the charging station there would be no financial component to it for the first year then we can look at a rate schedule from there if we choose so there'd be no charge to people using the station for the first year so just to make sure I understand if I were to buy electric vehicle I might come over park it here charge it walk home come back pick it up I mean that type of use would be okay I'd recommend the board may want to look at a use pause sure okay so that's the concept and then down the road it would be more like the charging stations that are out there now where your credit card or something you would use your credit card or something to charge your vehicle based on how much electricity you use would be how much you were charged okay the next project is the town hall file server replacement so we currently we just replaced the server this past week and so we're not requesting any funding for that for 2020 we were quite over funded in that project so we will take a look at this again in 2021 to see what we need to fund that to make sure we have funds for that when it needs to be replaced again and the next one here is the software replacement that we talked about a little bit Teresa this is just saying that eventually we are going to need to replace our current software and this is some we're not requesting any money for this year but just know that it will be coming as we look at what options are out there and what's best for the town could you you're anticipating 30 for 2021 that is what our estimate is right now is clearly just an estimate we have not even started why wouldn't we level that this year to start building that fund up so that we not get with a bigger build I mean it's not a huge deal to start with I think that was my thinking it was not a huge deal we just have no idea really what the final cost is going to be it might be only 10,000 all of a sudden done or it could be 40,000 we could move to something that's more of a software as a service that wouldn't be capital anyways that would be something that would be in our operating budget spend a minute talking about what you mean by software and I understand the concept of software here it says the NREC how are you pronouncing it software so that software is to do what it is our financial software property tax billing it's the clerk's office what else water billing all of those utility bills that you get all come from that software come from that software so the concept is to look at a product that better serves the town with those same essential functions yeah and the current software is fine it does its job it sends people bills it prepares property tax bills for us all of that does work it's just what is that plan they were going to no longer support that it's a single point of failure we have a person who owns a company that's going to retire and there's sounds like there might not be a successor or we don't know yeah and then there is one more Terry on page 15 15 15 there is the town hall and annex security upgrades so that I'm going to let Eric touch on that a little bit as well so we had some of our police officers go through the town hall and annex earlier this year and provide a recommendation report of some actions to improve building safety and security measures for our staff for the public and for our assets in these buildings from that report I've made a recommendation in the capital program to look at three major projects over the course of a couple years one would be that we've looked to implement FY19 would be silent alarm buttons that would alert police dispatch if there was an issue another is cameras and another is door alarms and these are I obtained these numbers by getting a quote from a contractor recommending in year one to do the silent alarms then building in the cameras and the exterior door alarms and outlying hears and there may be some savings there as big ticket fees as the server for the cameras and after we put this together we learned we might be able to use one server in this building and run the cable through the tube underneath the ground to the annex and save from buying a second server but we also need to take a look at the library as well and that's on our plans for this coming year okay so so there's no security right now no kind of a building security system whatsoever on any of the buildings have we ever had a problem yes so we have yes it doesn't happen very often but on occasion we'll have someone coming in who is very unhappy and you know they've yelled and screamed and like I said it doesn't happen very often but it does happen and so our employees are right there and we kind of have to be right there because it's an open public building and we're there to serve the public on the other hand we want something for them more than just picking up a phone which is still an option obviously and calling 911 but something that's even faster than that and pushing a button which you can do without necessarily being noticed maybe we think is a better approach for security reasons you've had people taken out forcibly but no so just a concern people I know of one example where I was in my office and someone was yelling and I started to go out and the person made a comment about how it's good that there were just women there because otherwise so I turned around and went back into my office and I called the police and they said we'll send an officer over and I said actually he's complaining about the police and I think if you send someone over that may make it even worse so I said stand by and we'll monitor the situation the person calmed down and left the building whether that was the right call or not it worked but in another situation it could have gone the other way I suppose and there's been other incidents like that and it happens at the library too this is just a little extra measure for our employees to have in their toolbox when they have a difficult situation at one time someone came in the office and sat in my office and refused to leave the police came over and escorted them out so and then there's the select board members who go to Rick's office and steal candy which is probably the only thing with it seems like we've talked about a couple buildings this building the annex you mentioned the library and we've also talked about the fire department in their budget and the second question is does it make sense to do this building by building or does it make sense to do sort of a town building-wide security effort each building is a little bit different and their needs are all different so these projects are different the fire department doesn't have the same needs for example the town hall does and so it is very specific it relates to making sure the door is reinforced and there's protection for the clerk that sits right outside the reception area very play-wise it's different than having the panic on the town hall okay any other questions for Jennifer then we will continue this as we do the public hearing so thank you very much and I will open the public hearing a little bit late on the fiscal year 2020 budget notice is hereby given that the Williston Select Board will hold a public hearing on Tuesday, January 8th 2019 at 8 p.m. give or take 20 minutes at the Williston Town Hall meeting room to receive comments on the proposed operating budget for fiscal year 2020 the capital budget for fiscal year 2020 to 2025 the proposed operating budget provides for expenses of $11,482,345 this represents a 3.3% increase over the current fiscal year the funds are used to provide municipal services including limited to police fire library recreation and highway maintenance so the public hearing is open Rick did you have any promise to make before we ask for it, promise so anyone who wishes to speak on any topic that is in the budget the floor is open to you at this point anyone if there is no one who wishes to speak on the public hearing then a motion to close the public hearing would be open for a second any discussion on the motion any comments received by electronically phone anything like that outreach one of the Eric had done a little bit of a survey to see what way of getting information out there they might be interested in this video so we are working on a video right now we hope to have done by the end of this week I'll say it by the end of next week I did happen to hear some comments over the weekend I was out a different subject I don't know if you get any feedback like that about the construction and the build up in the Finney crossing as well as Cottonwood different totally different than the budget I'm just saying feedback comes and our planning office it would be I don't think people necessarily understand how those things get approved so I did a little education how that occurs the planning department is not putting stuff on the front porch forum I believe monthly at least saying what's going on which is really great for people to at least have the opportunity to see what's going on any further discussion on the motion by the end yes not all those in favor of closing the public hearing say aye aye be opposed we'll move that back on to the budget review and we have the water sewer and storm water fund Bruce are you doing that or okay these new ads to the books yes yes yes yes yes excuse me so you want to just go by the way it is on the list water fund first sure operating budget operating in capital let's start with the operating okay the biggest thing in the water operating budget is the rates you know most of the line items we've held pretty steady there's no major increases one that I've asked for $5,000 more in is on page 9 is a hydrogen maintenance because the hydrants are taking more and more maintenance including one Christmas the weekend before Christmas they got taken out by a truck and we don't know who it was and took about 20 hours to fix it so where was that out front now in Marshall Ab the hours to fix it cost was also lost yeah the reason that's why I was still on vacation actually or why I was on vacation and the water department got a call that the tanks were dropping that's how we found out about CWD the tanks the water department responded and came in looking for them but CWD was concerned enough that they called me and left a message on my phone at home which I didn't see until a little bit later and came right in but they called me because the low the tanks have low and high levels and the low level is at 25 feet and had already dropped to 19 feet so they were below the low levels they were getting to the critical levels and broke this hydrant off and we didn't have to excavate the hole the hole was done for us by water we had to pump all the water out on a freezing night and deal with it but anyway that's what makes right it's not just the hydrant repair that costs us money we obviously pay for that water still CWD doesn't say okay well we'll give you a break oh we don't I thought you said that truck drove over it and kept going we haven't found the hydrant yet we believe the hydrant is underneath the mud out there that we haven't it was right next to a stormwater pond or ditch for lack of a better term that it still filled with silt we believe the hydrant is underneath that silt but we haven't found the hydrant yet he may have taken it down the road with him but we know we did notify the water department they did and then there's no good news about that the building that happened in front of us has a camera on it and I saw the camera and thought great we got a camera well the camera doesn't work so so that's unfortunate but it pumped out that much water before anybody even understood now if nobody's I mean it was 8 o'clock on a Saturday night if nobody's driving around that area day really or whatever you know the police may not have gone by there for a while so like I said the first a lot of times probably 60 to 70 percent of the times when we get caught about a break it's because CWD notices it and the tanks dropping or they can't fill they can't fill they gotta turn on more pumps to fill the tanks back up because they do the filling at night somebody's monitoring with some they're monitoring 24 hours 5 days a year so so that's just one of the places where we raised the budget a little bit once again there's no other significant changes that we actually have control over the rate the water rate though we are proposing it to go from 4 per thousand gallons to 503 per thousand gallons which is almost a 4 percent increase 3.93 percent one of the things that drives that is our cost to CWD we buy our water from CWD they tell us what their increase is going to be and then we have to figure that into our rates okay and it seems like the the main drivers in the rate increase will be their increase in their wholesale rate looks like we have some new payments for the water tank that's right in capital Jeff that goes into we've got to come up with that money somewhere and then the small amount needed for the hydrants that's right and then there may be one or two other items in there that's got some change but nothing significant so the basic user charge will be the same as last year isn't I reading that correctly? now basic user charge is increasing right now it's 553 and 1108 for commercial and industrial it's going to we're proposing based on the CPI which is what we've been doing for the past few years increasing that based on the CPI to go to 565 per quarter per quarter for commercial industrial for basic user charge and we're trying really to build the basic user charge anyway to help slow down the rate increases as far as charging people based on the thousands of gallons of water they use if we can get the basic user charge up a little bit more then we don't have to necessarily increase the rate so much what's the philosophy for how the basic user charge what's in the basic user charge versus in the user rate theoretically the basic user charge is supposed to cover all those costs you would have whether or not you draw one gallon of water or 50,000 that's what gets water to your shut off valve on your property basic user charge last time we evaluated did not cover all of that cost okay the downside to what Bruce is suggesting though is that as you increase the basic user charge the people are going to hit the most the ones who use the least water that's right people that are conserving now are doing a good job of keeping their water usage down because now they're getting most of their bill based on that water usage as the basic user charge goes up and they're still doing that being conservative they're getting a higher hit yeah okay I do understand that it's always a bit of a challenge to balance those out I guess my point more out of anything is I'd just like it to be consistent as opposed to trying to fluctuate them we should set a goal and then be consistent with that goal which is in one versus what charges are cost around the other okay questions on capital right now is it easier to do capital all at one time rather than do sewer next sewer basically along the same lines except that sewer has a pretty good fund balance that's one thing I should go back to water too is water doesn't have quite the fund balance that we'd like to have for emergencies or some catastrophe that happened so that we have some money in the bank sewer has a $3 million fund balance okay quite large we're using that fund balance to help keep the rates down in the sewer budget so if you looking at revenue you'll see that well one of the first things to see is the interest earn is that's on page 5 the interest earn is $33,600 that's because we got a $3 million fund balance so that money is put right into the revenue stream and then you'll see on page 5 from reserves that's $208,000 and $88 we're talking about taking from the fund balance to help hold the sewer rate down even with doing that we're still looking at an increase 5% 5.09% in the sewer rates when we first started putting this together Lisa's the one that takes her first crack at putting it together for us and she came into my office and said we're looking at a 20% increase in sewer rates and I knew Rick would have been floored if I'd even thought about going over and saying that to him so I said well I don't think we are but that is what it would be without going into the fund balance to help hold these rates so by taking that money out of the fund balance we're able to hold the rate at 5% increase and you know you can say well $3 million you could do a lot more than that but what happens is we keep using that fund balance to keep that rate down it's artificial over time it starts to catch up to us and that's what's starting to happen this budget uses the fund balance to keep it at 5% so it goes from 668 per thousand to 7 or 2 per thousand gallons and there's a couple things to drive that one is is what we pay the Tritown as exjunction for the treatment of our sewage and one of the reasons that that number is getting larger is because we're owning more of the sewer treatment plant every year we buy 10,000 more gallons of sewer capacity increases our ownership in the plant, our cost for that plant keep going up and that's another reason that helps drive the rates how much is the Essex using their rates to us do we know that's right in here can you listen what Paige that's on I'll tell you that's retail I'm sorry it's going to be right back to the beginning allocation charge or is that something different that's different I have that right at my fingertips anyway here it is it's on page 14 the top of 14 that's treatment isn't that what we're looking at yeah well that's what we're looking at but it doesn't that's just showing our retail rates that does not show in the Essex retail rate so I don't have that right in front of me so it's not going up 20% anticipated I'm sorry it's not going up 20% the 20% is a no it's not just that it's driving this once again it's our increase in ownership of the plant that we have to pay toward our capacity allocation going up every year so you're saying that's part of it right we own more of the plant and when we buy that capacity we in theory buy more of the plant really so is there whole budget increases our proportion of that budget increases also Bruce did I hear you talk about a difference between the retail and the wholesale rate that we get charged there's certainly a difference I don't have the wholesale rate right in front of me is what I'm telling you Jeff we don't charge out the tri-town because we have to cover our expenses yet then too but that wholesale rate goes into what we come up with for the retail rate just like the we pay CWD for water so if they have an increase of 3% then we have to figure that into when we do our rate structure and still pay our salaries and our infrastructure costs and everything on top of that right okay I get that I see where you're going with that the wholesale rate is the wholesale rate and that will show up in here as one of our expenses but then as we're establishing the retail rate we take into account all those okay I'm our cost per gallon or a thousand gallons would be the wholesale rate I want to make sure we're treating water the same way we treat that's going to sound funny as soon as I'm starting to say that it's going to be weird but just use my words literally not the we treat the water budget the same as we treat the sewer budget in that we have the wholesale rate we get charged for either water or treatment of our sewage but the resulting rate that we have to charge users which is what we're going to call the retail rate obviously has to be different because of all the cost we have to incur to be able to provide that service to our residences and businesses okay just when I heard you say that it perked my ears up but I think we're on the same page okay never mind sorry I'm trying to speak without putting my mind in gear yet I'm looking at page 14 under treatment and it talks about the current retail rate but that's the rate that the town gets charged per thousand gallons for treatment is that correct I think that that's actually that shouldn't say retail rate that should say wholesale rate that's wrong that's what we're that's what we're being charged by Essex you said we're charging 668 that's correct so on page three under user receipts that's our retail rate so that's what was throwing me off to the language that should say wholesale rate that's what we're paying as a junction basically we charge about double just pay for the infrastructure maintaining our infrastructure yes it does say wholesale rate yeah and the sentence underneath oh yeah it does it's just on the top line the warning was wrong sorry about that did you see that Jeff? I did pick up on that you have to read all the way through it all the words we should have caught that long before this anyway that shouldn't say retail up top okay are you going to move on to stormwater? stormwater we're not looking at an increase in rates at all in stormwater we're good because it's we did project that we wouldn't have to hope for change rates at least the first five years of our fee structure one of the new line items underneath revenue which is on page two is interest income from loans we're already starting to see the interest we're actually starting to see the loans start to get paid back for the homeowners associations revenue side the only number that quite honestly we're not totally positive of although we're told from the state that they're pretty sure we're going to get the money is the state grant utility incentive of $25,000 which we got last year they say we're getting it this year and they're saying that they're going to be asking for us to get it next year too but I guess that hasn't even gone through the legislature yet that monetary so we can't have that $25,000 just assuming we're going to have a whole lot of other things in there that are out of the ordinary Chris do you anticipate needing to use the clean water SRF to help provide loans to the homeowners associations are we able to self fund that again we are so far self funding and we're saying away from that as much as we can but it's still an option we actually do have a problem this fiscal year and we have most likely it sounds like we'll have a request to loan out more money than we have available and that's part of the success of our program in a sense it's a good problem it involves meta-rage but it doesn't really matter we share it so what we're going to be doing is coming to the board and asking for permission for the sewer fund to borrow money from the general fund I said sewer I'm thinking sewer because I'm looking at the sewer budget here to borrow from the general fund and we have to figure out what the terms and conditions that would be we can do it it's done on the basis of for other municipalities we've just never had the need to do it here we've contacted legal counsel we have an opinion from legal counsel it's a future issue for the board enough said so I was going to bring that up so that we are short a little bit that way for the loan part how do we cover that shortfall plan to be almost a half million yeah no it's almost it's $400,000 that we're short the one metal rich project by itself is a half almost a half million dollars and they've already got $300,000 the whole project was $800,000 there are projects alone so and we'll talk about this but the loan program even though there's what could be viewed as a negative term a shortfall it's actually been a highly successful loan program as evidenced by the shortfall because for a variety of reasons it's pushed up their original schedule of when they did these projects and that's a good thing it's not a bad thing it's just a matter of if we get the bar of the money from the general fund like Rick said do we pay it does the shortfall program pay interest or how does that work out it's like the shortfall fund itself will be able to pay it back that's not an issue it will be probably 5 years or less so it's not like a long term grants will also bring that down as grants get paid but they come after the construction grants go to the individual neighborhoods not the town the benefit of those well the grants actually come back and they pay back they pay down the loan amounts it's optional for the neighborhoods we did not require the neighborhoods to use that money directly that's where some are choosing not to at this point most neighborhoods have chosen to use that grant money to pay back their loan and we are encouraging people to do that so that we have more money to lend out to other neighborhoods so that everyone can get these projects finished but they don't have to it's not required so getting back to the stormwater budget as a whole because we are getting interest income or getting money back from those loans we're really thinking that we'll be able to hold that rate for stormwater for quite a while because we'll be getting that money back in to help offset other expenses that come along gradually the fund was weighted more towards capital projects but as those projects get done it'll be gradually shift over to maintenance more than capital anything else on operating for stormwater questions before we go to the capital I have one I looked up the budget document that the S6 junction sent over to us on the sewer the budget went up the water went up a little over 5 and waste water by a little over 6 well that's the okay I'm just talking about the rate that we have to pass the budget that doesn't necessarily mean the rate actually the rate went up about 6 percent or waste water and that's their cost to treat it by the way our percentage of the total plan is now at 37 percent okay well as Bruce said every year it's been gradually increasing every year by the year 2022 we'll be at 1,080,000 2022 at the end of the last next purchase of the 50,000 we've been buying 10,000 a year we will then own 1,080,000 gallons of capacity at the treatment plan and it's what I think it's a 3.3 million gallon plan I don't know the design capacity that sounds about right but I just don't know the number I just don't remember anyway that's where we will be as far as ownership of the plan all right capital well since we just talked about storm water do you want to do storm water okay storm water capital only has three sheets they're the same capital sheets that we've had in the past album flow restoration and we added a phosphorus control plan underneath that capital item also because that's a plan that we're going to have to develop now too so right now we have 326,000 in savings there and we're looking at doing the same 49,340 into that program through the capital other one is watershed improvements watershed improvements are just that it's you know projects that are identified in the watershed improvement program for the town and we're talking about right now that's actually the one that's got the least amount of money 182,666 we're projecting we're asking to put 55,000 in capital into that one yet so that one's actually yeah and the last one is the storm water loans to neighborhoods and that's where you'll see our capital current capital savings are and then what we're asking to put in there manager approved at 209,490 and that was because after this after we looked at the storm water budget we did make some other adjustments and that changed our number but then you'll see over there where it says loan funds needed 416,570 but some of that money's already being talked about for other projects they're still out there so but certainly before we come back to you on what the shortfall is we've got an exact number so the total seems more than we were talking about when we went through all of this because you already have almost 800,000 outstanding and then you're going to need another 630 right because if you look on there you'll see that Meadow Ridge is on there for only half, there are projects that they've done and the project they have out right now is almost a half million dollars by itself and then we still have Union Association Power Lane that's going to be happening this spring so that's Williston Commons, yes so that's money that we're going to be loaning so that's where we start to run into having a shortfall Bruce is there a quick explanation there may not be of the difference between the project that's titled Flow Restoration Fosterist Control Plan versus the one called Watershed Improvement which also seems to focus on Allenbrook there is the Allenbrook Flow Restoration was originally put aside for the two projects that the town was supposed to build underneath the Allenbrook Flow Restoration Plan we had a project that's still somewhat alive for right back behind Town Hall here and then one down on the Mehan farm that is basically the wash put on it by wetlands so that doesn't relieve us from being able to do that project just means we may have to find somewhere else to do those projects so that's what that money was for initially for just our two projects out of the Flow Restoration Plan where the Watershed Improvement is even though it does talk about Allenbrook, that's for Watershed all over the town it could be something in Muddybrook it could be something in Suckerbrook we had a project Jessica actually spearheaded before she left that gave us a whole list of projects that we all worked on to come up with a list oh that's right, that's right, yes, okay and then Water Sewer since I have Chamberlain water on it I'll just start with the water ones right on top there's nothing there's nothing on this one right now for the show that in the out years there's going to be a project there Water Sewer Meter Reading System Upgrade is just that that's the money we're putting aside so that another 10 years 5 years whatever we have to upgrade that meter reading system again that's what that money is for so Bruce, just going back to the page that you flew by here so a $270,000 expense in 2020 2022 that's two and only $20,000 in the current fund for that yep nothing budgeted for this year no because it's right now that $20,000 right now is just to have the design done this is literally just replacing a section of waterline up on Chamberlain lane that for some reason a smaller line was put in between two larger sections and I don't know why it was put in because one project they didn't know what was going to come up down the road or whatever so they made the line smaller at some point but then when the other project came in it came in as a larger project so now we have to replace that section it's fairly cut and dry I'm sorry you have a resistor in the line that's exactly right in theory it makes the rest of the line that same size come 2022 we don't know what mechanism will pay for this yet if I read this correctly it says to be determined well it's water fund so it's it'll have to come out of the water fund capital budget I mean it is one we could go to a state revolving loan fund for if we wanted to I mean rather than just have it that is a possibility we have made a conscious decision to try to stay away from those funds Jeff because then it's just a matter that they get spread out and you have to pay those back for so long sure yeah and you can charge that well it's not interest but it's administrative so our meter system little upgrade we just spoke about water and sewer pickup replacement once again it's just to you know keep our fleet rotating and in decent shape so it's 15 8 with one do in 2020 our dodge so we will be replacing one backhoe replacement this one is water and sewer also it is split with highway because highway uses the backhoe also so it's just putting the money aside so then we do go to replace it we have the money there and is that a reasonable split to 50-50 yes sure we're not charging the water users to if it was 75-25 I'd be like wait a second it's a pretty fair split so try to just stay with water so then the other one I assume I'm sorry okay okill generator these sheets aren't numbered I would tell you the numbers so I apologize but the okill generator is we have one we only own one water pump station in town and that's on okill road that serves the thompson and health center and a dozen homes past that right now when we have a power outage or something like that happens they don't have water so last year we put a fence around it as a security measure so we want to just get a generator on it so that we don't have to run around and run a generator up there every time we have to do that we have to hire an electrician to come in and get it up up there for a generator so that's what this project is for just out of curiosity is our license or whatever it is to operate a water system does that require this to happen or is this just because it's a recommendation it doesn't mean that some of you won't come in and say shower we need to from our last we get our five year audit done and it's one of the recommendations in there I'm not just agreeing in any way so that takes care of with one more exception shooting the water system risk and resilience as you can see under the explanation this is a new function that we have to do for the water system so we're just putting the money aside so that in 2021 we can have this study done to meet the the law that we have to meet at this point hydrants aren't part of the water system I'm sorry did I miss one? yeah just before the Oakville generator so hydrogen replacement capital actually you can see that this changed last year we asked for $30,000 or $40,000 wasn't enough money we got five hydrants done probably 60 or so that we need to have the replacements done on so we've increased that number to 60 so we can start to do more and we'll get a better deal anyway if we put out a contract for 10 rather than five or whatever so that's what this is for because in the explanation there it tells you 120 of them are 40 years or older does the one that got knocked over by the truck does that get covered by the same budget or does that get covered by insurance or no insurance but it gets covered by our regular operating this is strictly an asset management 10 capital that are already past their life cycle I just wonder whether those things came out of this the one that actually got taken out was an older one and because it was an older one it was very deeper than it should have been so had it been right it may not have been as bad as what happened when a hydrant gets taken out in theory the water it'll break at the coupling just above ground and the water will never come out of that hydrant it's already shut because the valve is actually below that coupling well the whole rod inside is made to break this one was buried deeper than it should have been so when the truck hit it it didn't have the coupling to break at so it took all that torque all the way down to where it connected at the water main and broke it and we have more like that out there it's been a mess to fix I left at 1.30 Saturday morning I went out there 9 or 9.30 and they got down to a certain point and Aaron got down there and turned the nut to turn for the hydrant because we did find that and I said okay you're down there I don't need to be here anymore I'm going home 8 o'clock in the morning my phone rings and Aaron says we're still out here and he said and this is what I want to do and he wanted to at that point discontinue the hydrant cut the line put a straight T in and we'll go back so we're not done with this one yet we're going to go back in the spring now and have to put another hydrant back in yet so those are town employees doing that oh yeah well it's town employees that respond but we always contract it was ECI that came in they do 90% of our emergency work they're set up for it we make a phone call and literally they respond without much question so we've had a good relationship with them that way so that's hydrant replacements sorry I missed that one community risk and resilience we already went over additional sewer capacity when we already talked about a little bit as far as our cost of the sewer treatment plan but it's $100,000 $10,000 a year so if you notice we showed the last payment that's a big question Mark because I suspect we will need capacity beyond that and so at some point over the next couple of years a conversation with the Village of Essex Junction we'll have to start about whether they're willing to sell more capacity beyond what they've already sold and if they are what were they willing to charge us for that but right now it's a big question so I put any money in past 2022 but there's a good chance that we may need to put some more past that we have all that booked already the next three years 2020 through 2022 yes with my $10,000 a year the issue is going to be and we'll talk about this when we do a tax and a I assume next is the concept of we may not have enough capacity for the build out of the town down the road and if we're able to continue to buy capacity that's maybe not an issue if we can't buy capacity then what do we do we have a very big question there's two options one is to buy capacity and this is much more difficult is to change the plant so we can handle additional capacity we would have to pay for all that one might be to upgrade the plant I mean there are a couple options some are going to be a lot less realistic and the most likely will be Williston does its upgrade of the plant well Essex would do it we would pay for it in 2022 when I asked if it was booked I don't mean does it booked in the plant do we have users so it's not 300,000 gallons 300,000 is that already sold to somebody okay so that's not booked in terms of used we're buying the capacity so we pay for the capacity we don't pay for the gallons until somebody hooks up and uses it and they pay us back for costs sewer system infrastructure upgrades there's nothing in that right now mostly that's for the industrial app of course Maine no money in that for 2020 when is V-trans proposing oh wait this is on the sewer side never mind V-trans that's a water pipe that's an industrial app that's the other end of industrial okay on that project we have already set money aside for that out of the water fund and the town general fund whether or not is enough by the time this project is done is still open question the good news on that project is it is actually in right of way right now so they're at least to that point where they're starting to talk to the property owners and that's usually the last and longest straw to these things another one is pump station upgrades that's $175,000 we've been putting aside for us to do our pump station upgrades one every other year some a little bit faster than that if the money is available but rather than go to the state revolving loan fund so we don't have to go there and mission upgrades for pump stations mission mission controllers mission is the monitoring system to our pump stations we own and maintain 10 major pump stations some of them already have mission controllers some do not and some need to have an upgrade to the mission controllers so this is just a project to get missions on all of our pump stations so that we have the same thing throughout all of them gives our guys much more capability instead of just getting a phone ringing and saying there's an alarm it'll tell them the generator's running or a pump's out or something like that so they have some idea of what they're talking about or what's going on before they ever get here this is remote monitoring so Bruce I'm sorry the word isn't discrepancy but one difference that I'm sure there's an explanation for is when we were talking about the pump station upgrades there's 6 pump stations listed but when we're talking mission mission control mission upgrades it talks about 10 pump stations so I'm just trying to understand we don't have all 10 of our pump stations listed in that list of pump station upgrades some have been done so they're kind of off the list you own the Brennan Woods pump station yes we own it why is that why don't we own the Brennan Woods because there are older developments there's an actual policy for when the town owns a pump station and when it doesn't we didn't own it until Finney Crossing when it was just Brennan Woods there wasn't enough homes on it so Brennan Woods has owned that until about two years ago Snyder had to replace this there to bring it up to standards and then we ended up taking it over because then it went over the it's well over the 200 now so the criteria is 200 connections or a municipal connection so if we have some place where we hook on to a pump station then they could ask us at that point for instance a school it could be a school Jeff it's the same municipal it could be a school part of the town or whatever but yeah that would make sense to me so we finished with going through the budget totally now next week we'll be doing a deep dive into the budget to see what we would like to add or subtract from the recommendations that we're getting they'll be thanks Bruce other budget stuff or other stuff to do as well as the budget primarily the budget discussions next week can I ask a question maybe for preparation so I've been doing some research on I sent a note out to other select board members just on some of the research I found a paper on the increase in fire department spending increase in actual fire department need certainly we need a fire department of course but we need an ever increasing size and cost of fire department and what it said and I don't you know I don't have the data behind our own fire department but what it basically said is that fire department growth is not being driven by fires in fact not at all it's being driven by and what you end up doing is you are increasing ever increasing cost of fire department which is fairly expensive right fire department training and probably insurance and all the other things that go with it is probably very costly and fire trucks driving fire trucks to you know on EMT calls which I assuming that that's one of the reasons the chief doesn't like the giant truck something smaller and nimbler to take out for ambulance service so my question is should do we have any data behind our usage of our fire department and fire department people that tells us do we have the right balance of firemen versus EMTs and I've also I've noticed it's only been two years from me obviously but that a lot of what the chief comes in and talks about is recently got an award for ambulance service and getting EMT training which is very necessary you know the ever aging population do we need some kind of a balance change in terms of spending because my understanding from the paper and there's a lot of papers out there actually on this topic because it's I guess it's a topic many municipalities are dealing with is that fire departments in general are just more expensive than ambulance services right significantly more and is there a way for us to balance do some rebalancing there when I see the guys go out for I haven't seen them in my own neighborhood we've never had a fire in our neighborhood to my knowledge I mean maybe there's been some small kitchen fires or something that aren't visible but we see the fire trucks roll in and seems just like an inefficient use of resources which is kind of what one of the things the paper says is you know having firemen fire trucks big ladder trucks or whatever we have pumpers come out and you know you're wearing down equipment for no need do we have fires in Welliston are there do we have fires yeah but you're correct over the trend has been downward state requirements that large commercial buildings are sprinkler that great that was a big factor and the smoke detectors is helpful the building materials over time have changed so all those have thankfully reduced the number of action but and we can have asked the chief to come in on Tuesday to address some of these questions but the reason why he was interested in shifting the ambulance service was that actually we use those people that were firefighters to be the ambulance people so they're cross trained and so we're not paying just for firefighters we're paying for them for both levels of service right but that might be more expensive if we've got dual trained people then you know 10 dual trained rather than 5 firefighters and 5 ENTs and it seems like we added several people last year right staff and he's asking for more people this year and just something to look at and the other thing to note is we gradually have been reducing the amount of rolling stock that we have on the fireside and the chief's most recent proposal reflects that right I saw that that's what kind of piqued my interest but we'll have the fire chief in so as you asked these questions he'll be able to address and he'll be available to answer questions from the board you raise a good point to me it's always so difficult to know it's impossible for me to know so I need to rely on Rick and Eric and chief Morton to write fire department for Williston both in terms of equipment in terms of staff in terms of what have you it's just it's just a very hard question it's not a question I can answer so I really need to rely on sort of the people who understand this issue better than I do part of the story it's a really good point because a big part of the story was the push for more less career firefighters and more going back to more volunteer because of the current safety of buildings and maybe in an old town old building town like a Winooski maybe that's different in Williston town there's probably the ratio of old to new structures is quite low right I don't know you would have to tell me that so the push was for more volunteer the problem with that though is if you're a first responder and you have to be within a certain radius you have to be in your run gear so for example I have a child going on there's no way in the world that I can do both that's where some of the volunteer went away from not advocating one way or another just trying to explain another piece of it is the chief makes the point of it's getting more and more difficult on call staff so if we're going to have a staff fire department we need to rely more and more on the professionals that's just the nature of the beast I assume that's probably a trend elsewhere but certainly is the trend in Williston so it's just a very complicated thing there's a sheer volume of seniors here that's where a huge bulk of your calls are going to be for the first responder services and E&T services so that would drive that too I don't want older folks burn up things in their kitchen they have to respond with more just than the E&T as well no doubt, I just have no understanding for what that looks like they don't understand them all they send everything out if they don't know that makes sense I don't know if this is a factor at all but part of it was you know the firefighters union the cloud the firefighters union had to continue raising staffing levels versus the downward trend of need firefighters not EMTs of course and as being an issue but I don't know if that's an issue that we have here but I would say the fire union does have statewide a year or so ago they convinced the state legislature to pass a bill that has an automatic presumption as it relates to workers cop issue and I find those things kind of dangerous for municipalities because an automatic presumption assumes that the town is gilling before you or not the town is gilling is caused because they are a firefighter and I've seen in another state I worked in they had an automatic presumption relating to hypertension for police officers guess what every officer had high blood pressure and was it really related because they were a police officer or was it because they just were overweight or whatever so that was extremely possible in the state of canada so unfortunately the state legislature there's arguments on the other side so let's move on just one more thing on the budget the new form I will give you another form there won't be any significant changes hoping to get the county budget information all up to the transit information and any others I think I do shows up as a revenue things like that and so you can look at this another major policy decision the board is going to have to make is the relates to the power equipment whether or not we're going to include that as a bond vote and so that's something else that you know it's directly related budget but it's kind of a separate issue in the sense that it will require a bond vote, it will require a separate article I was going to say something but anyway members report a couple things first in my written report a couple things I wanted to point out just a reminder we have a site visit schedule for Monday January 14 at we'll be issuing an agenda for that but it basically is just one item agenda and there will be a short site visit and that will be it for that meeting we also have the meeting we were just talking about on the following night Tuesday January is it again the end of hurricane lane 291 hurricane lane the property site small property transfer we talked about that I will not be able to attend that meeting I will do my own the next in report application we have a list I I don't know January we generally try to handle this quietly so that you have some it was a long list it is and let's see another item that is not in my written report I have several items here that fall in that category legislative breakfast the first step is picking a date so I am looking at February 4 which is a Monday morning I will actually be away from Florida the only thought that a couple of people had is it is the Monday actually the Super Bowl game so maybe that is a bad morning or bad February 11 we can't do any sooner than that because next week is too soon we can't put it all together the week after that is Martin Luther King Day and the week after that is the late Champlain Chamber of Commerce so February 4th is the first available date February 4th so I said to Rick the legislature will not have done very much between the time coming out in 3rd week in January until February but it will be a good opportunity for people to tell us what they hope we would do should we go with February 11 instead I am good with either date I will try to check my calendar but I am not anticipating problems on the 4th because of the Super Bowl me either me either is fine but I have to leave in a timely manner on a flight myself we try to get people out of there by 9 o'clock and we stick to that no we do alright so we will go with February 11 alright next I am still working on the substance abuse forum that I have talked to you about before the reason I am bringing up this evening is I wanted to see if there is any interested people on this board that might be serving on a subcommittee we have two subcommittees one is dealing with the format and structure of the forum and the other is dealing with the publicity and outreach and so excuse me publicity and outreach is the one where we are lightest right now I have got a good group so far that is the format and structure but either one if anyone is in service just let me know it is not a requirement for sure I don't know probably looking at the list here I don't know I guess whatever group we have we tailor the meeting schedule to whoever oh I want to ask the board if you have any photographs that were taken by you or someone else that might be good to include in the annual report for 2018 for them to either me or to Deb Beckett she has tentatively settled on a photograph for the front page which is focused on the solar panel I took this one kind of partial let's see and let's see let's look at the photos oh I guess at our next meeting if we have a full board I may take a photograph of the board as well we will do that this evening partly because it is late but it wouldn't be the same taking it early in the meeting not there yet so that's all I have for this evening thank you under other business it's my privilege again to write the select board report for the town report so you can expect that in your inbox sometime probably after the weekend and to get back to me before the following weekend I just want to get these things done quickly so I will try my best to do something quickly as well thank you for doing that any other business that people have to talk about tonight just something I'm sorry just checked my e-calendar and it looks like I'm not going to be able to make the 11th sorry don't change for me I just I just I just budget meetings when will it end when is the budget finalized the last gasp is the 29th we would like to get a gun before that possible